I thought that topic title might get some attention but it is true: as shipped, straight off the CD/DVD, if you turn on the WebCollage screensaver module, Mandriva instantly serves up some astounding porn to any user, and I don't think that is a Good Thing, in general ...

but anyway, back to my question: webcollage may fill the screen with porn by default, but there is a -directory command line option that will do the vidwacker magic on your personal photos instead, and IMHO that would be far more fitting in a family/work environment

but I cannot find the place to make the edit that would add this option to the webcollage command line.

I had edited /home/share/xscreensaver/config/webcollage.xml and inserted a <directory> tag to contain the path to my photos -- a more general solution would just use the photo directory specified in the general gnome-screensaver defaults -- but even after restarting gnome-screensaver it still runs webcollage with only the -root parameter -- it is getting the "-root" from somewhere, but I can't locate where that is.

can I add -directory to the webcollage command line, either globally or per-user?

***Me reads the installation notes of the webcollage screensaver, which surely enough is everything else but the default Mandriva screensaver***

I think it does explain things in a pretty good way- or not?

This webcollage sounds like an interesting program

Webcollage is a screensaver module in the xscreensaver package, not a stand-alone program.

Erm I know.

Oh, my bad....

It's more semantics of word use. I tend to refer to everything as programs, than to screensaver modules, or utilities or something more specific. Generally though, it's my mistake

this discussion is very cute and all, but the situation remains that, as shipped, the default behaviour of the screensaver is to serve up screenfulls of explicit sex, and who knows, maybe that is the Mandriva target audience, and that's fine too, though I would expect the penguins above to be, well, doing something a bit prior to what we see in the family-scene that Mandrivausers.org takes as their banner

however ...

I have read the docs for webcollage and as I explained in the very first post that heads this thread, the situation is fixable by simply adding in the appropriate command line options to the launching of this program, and with a screensaver like the original XScreensaver, that was very easy to do, the configuration files for that program even persist in Mandriva 2008 however the Mandriva Gnome installation chooses not to use those default configuration files.

So what I am really asking is not that Mandriva cease to serve up the porn by default, but only that I would really like to know where the Gnome Screensaver controls have been hidden in this new release because I'm apparently in that minority user-class of people who don't want my kids seeing wide open beavers every time they visit my office. I'm just funny that way

and here it is: edit /home/share/applications/screensavers/xscreensaver-webcollage.desktop and change the single -root option to
include the -directory option as specified in the man page.

/home/share/xscreensaver/config/webcollage.xml is apparently ignored, not precisely sure why, and fwiw, I see this same issue was also discussed on the FedoraForum.org site.